Distributed computer networks that execute business applications support business organizations. Situations that are critical and important for the organization can occur at any time inside or outside the organization. Often, the situations are unexpected. The applications generate alerts to inform one or more users about the situation, for example: A customer relation management (CRM) application reports that a key customer terminates a contract. A production planning application reports delivery problems for an important order. A business analysis application detects a decline in revenue. A computer system monitor points out insufficiency of resources and informs about an expected memory overflow. For alert systems, the following references are useful: U.S. Pat. No. 6,185,603 to Henderson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,157,941 to Verkler et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,748,884 to Royce et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,786,755 to Cicchino et al., U.S. Pat No. 5,754,111 to Garcia, U.S. Pat. No. 5,548,753 to Linstead et al.
Further: GEISSBÜHLER A ET AL: “Design of a general clinical notification system based on the publish-subscribe paradigm” 1997 Amia Annual Fall Symposium. A Conference Of The American Medical Informatics Association. Proceedings, Proceedings Of 1997 Amia Annual Fall Symposium The Emergence Of Internetable Health Care Systems That Really Work, Nashville, Tenn, USA, 25-29 0, 25-29 October 1997, pages 126-130, XP002179981 1997, Philadelphia, Pa., USA, Hanley & Belfus, USA.
Further: J. BREED ET AL.: “The Spacecraft Emergency Response System (SERS) For Autonomous Mission Operations” 3RD INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON REDUCING THE COST OF SPACECRAFT GROUND SYSTEMS AND OPERATIONS, [Online] March 1999 (1999-03), pages 1-8.
Geissbühler et al. discusses a publish-subscribe paradigm as a mechanism providing a framework for the exchange of data between independent applications in an event-driven manner. The paradigm is used in the context of a clinical notification system. Escalation is incorporated.
Royce et al. as well as Breed et al. discuss event-based notification systems arranged to support escalation procedures.
Business applications can be configured to provide electronic notifications to a single recipient or to a group of recipients (cf. Linstead et al.). There is a technical problem relating to the configuration of the business application notification system to select a specific target group that receives alert notifications from a particular business application.